


Birthright

by Baylor



Series: Birthright [1]
Category: The Faculty (1998), The X-Files
Genre: Alien Resistance, Aliens, Alternate Universe, Angst, Conspiracy, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Men in Black - Freeform, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Road Trips, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 19:31:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 19,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/930243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baylor/pseuds/Baylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Faculty AU. After the aliens are defeated is when their problems really begin. A bit of X-Files mixed in for good measure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ohio

**Author's Note:**

> Podfic available [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/941197).
> 
> Primary work in the Birthright verse.

September 1998  
Herrington, Ohio

In his waking dreams, Casey is on the cover of Time. He's the hero of the story, and he gets the girl. His friends all have their own happy endings, and the future is glaringly bright. In his waking dreams, people listen to Casey's story, and believe. 

But only in his dreams. 

_____

_Aliens took over our school, then the whole town, but we stopped them by killing their queen._

"Is it drugs?" his parents asked. 

"We found the gun," the police said. 

"Let's talk about Miss Drake," the FBI said. 

A group of teenagers and a trashed drug lab. A gun with fingerprints all over it. A wrecked car in the parking lot. One missing girl and four missing faculty members. A fight over a boy. A wild story about aliens from the school outcast, who just the day before had called 911 with another wild story about a dead body in the faculty lounge. 

Casey would never know if the citizens of Herrington really did not remember what had happened, or if they had all entered into a pact of denial. Before long, he wasn't certain himself of what had happened. 

_____

There had to be evidence, Stokely thought, and she tried to steer them toward it. But there was no Miss Drake in the gym. There was no Marybeth-creature in the bleachers. There was no parasite in Zeke's trashed garage. There was no Mr. Furlong, no Miss Burke, no Mrs. Brummel, and when they went to the address listed on Marybeth's registration card, there was a vacant lot. 

"So, Marybeth is a new friend of yours?" they asked. "And where did she go? What did she hook you up with? New products? New drugs to try out?" 

It was on the tip of Stokely's tongue to say, No, you idiots, she hooked us up with a whole new form of life, but then she realized what it would sound like and she stopped talking. 

_____

"We're not making this up," Stan said over and over, frantically. 

"Delilah and Stokely had a fight about you, isn't that right?" they asked. "You quit the football team this week, Stan. Why is that? Too many new things to do with your new friends? Tell us about the drugs, Stan. Tell us about the gun. Tell us about the plan. You're a good kid, we know you're a good kid. Let us help you." 

It was the look of agonized worry on his mother's face that did him in. "We can get you help," she pleaded. "Please, Stan, we'll get the best program. But you have to let us help you." 

He didn't know anything about the faculty members, he said in the end. Or Marybeth. She was some new girl at school. She'd been at the garage, and come to the game with them. That was all he knew. They'd all gotten high. They'd fooled around with the gun. Del and Stokely had fought. And then they'd come to the game and hung out in the gym. That was all. 

Yes, he'd go to rehab. Yes, he'd do the program. Yes, he wanted to get clean. 

The cops decided they had nothing to charge him with. The FBI agent threw a card on the table and told him to call if his memory improved concerning the missing faculty members. 

Stan locked it all up in a safe in his mind, and then did everything he could to avoid even walking by the corner he had shoved it into. 

_____

Delilah walked into the interview room, looked at the impassive faces, and totaled up the score. 

Zeke, she said. They all went over to Zeke's and got high on his homemade scat. They messed around with Zeke's gun. She and Stokely had a fight about Stan, and she left angry. That was all. She'd gone to the football game after that. 

Zeke, she said again. Zeke with the gun. Casey and Stokely talking about aliens, some wild tale about aliens taking over the faculty. They're weird like that, she said. Stokely, into her sci-fi and conspiracy theories. Casey, never the center of attention. 

She was upset about breaking up with Stan, she said. He'd quit the football team. He was hanging out with a new crowd. She'd thought that maybe if she hung out with them too, she and Stan could work things out. 

It was just the one time, she told her mother. She'd never tried drugs before, and never would again. She was scared. She'd learned her lesson. 

When she didn't want to go back to Herrington High, her mother sent her off to private boarding school. The student newspaper had a full staff, but she was named editor of the yearbook by the end of her first month. 

_____

They started with Zeke while he was still in the emergency room, getting his head stitched up. 

"Your friends tell us that aliens took over your high school, Zeke," they said. "But let's not talk about that just yet. Let's talk about what you put in this," and they held up an empty pen. 

Zeke looked from the pen to the men's faces and said, "I want my lawyer." 

They never could pin murder on him. No bodies. But the drug lab, the illegal gun, they had him there. 

No one in Herrington was really surprised that Zeke Tyler ended up in prison. Really, what else did you expect from a kid like Zeke? 

_____

Casey finally wised up, but not soon enough. He'd told the story too earnestly, too many times, too insistently. 

His parents took him to see a psychiatrist, and he answered her questions carefully. He thought if he did drugs, the other kids would like him more. They'd made up the story about the aliens because it seemed exciting and important. He'd wanted to be important. He'd wanted to be cool. But it wasn't real. He knew that. 

Sure, he'd go to therapy. He didn't want to get into any more trouble. He didn't want to upset his parents any more. He'd be the good kid again, really. 

The woman had nodded and smiled encouragingly and said things like, "That's very good, Casey," and "I'm glad you're ready to work on your problems." Then she asked him to wait in the outer room while she talked to his parents in her office. 

Casey tried to run when the EMTs with the hypo of sedative came in, but there was nowhere to go. 

"This is for the best, son," his father said. "You need to get well. It's a good facility. You work hard, and you'll be home soon." 

Casey, strapped into the gurney, glazed from the drugs, said faintly, "Why are you lying to me, Dad? I've always told you the truth." 

But the doors to the ambulance were already shutting.


	2. That Place

October 1998-July 1999  
Columbus, Ohio

 _That Place,_ Casey called it later. That Place, where they contaminated him with drugs, where they locked him in rooms, where they strapped him to beds. That Place, where one day men in suits would come to ask him questions about the aliens and believe every word he said, and where the next day the doctor would say there were no men in suits, there were no aliens, there was only a sick kid. 

That Place, where Casey never, never wanted to be again. No matter what. 

_____

He could figure his way out of this, Casey felt certain. He could find the right things to say, he could convince them, he could get better, or at least appear to, and then he could go home. From there -- well, Casey didn't know what he would do from there, but he had to get out of here before he could do anything else. 

But he couldn't find the right words in here, it seemed. If he said it had happened, he was delusional. If he said it hadn't happened, he was trying to trick them. There were drugs that would make him spill everything, make it pour out of him in a deluge, no matter how hard he tried to bottle it up. 

And then there was the logic of what they were saying. Aliens, taking over Herrington High? _Casey, are you on drugs?_ Miss Drake had asked frantically, and he had been, they all had been, tweaking at Zeke's place, and he had hesitated, pen in hand, but then Zeke had snatched the gun away from Stan and put a bullet in Miss Drake's head without even thinking twice. 

It had been so loud. Casey had never heard a gun fired before that night. He hadn't known how loud it would be. 

He hadn't known that it would knock Miss Drake right off her feet as she fell. 

_Casey, are you on drugs?_ he heard her asking, and he flinched. 

_____

The men with the suits had little notepads, like the police, and they wrote everything down carefully. Their questions were specific, and sometimes odd: How long did it take for the drug to have an effect on Mr. Furlong? Was he immediately disabled, or did he have some level of function, and if so, for how long? You could see the difference in behavior in the members of the faculty; why could you not detect that Delilah was infected? Looking back, did Marybeth engage in any behaviors that might have alerted you to her alien makeup? 

_This is real,_ Casey thought, swimming in a haze of drugs, listening to himself answer their questions in a slow, careful voice that always told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. _This is happening._

He hung onto that thought, even when the following day his psychiatrist insisted that he had seen no police, no FBI, no lawyers, no one in a suit. He had painted in a group art session yesterday, the shrink said. Didn't he remember? 

"Where's my painting?" Casey asked abruptly, and for one split second, his doctor looked frightened. Then -- 

"There's no need to get agitated, Casey," the shrink said smoothly. 

"I'm not agitated," Casey said clearly. "I just want to see my painting." 

The shrink gestured with her hand, and a male nurse twice Casey's weight was suddenly beside him, beefy hand around Casey's thin arm. "It's all right, Casey," the shrink said soothingly. "I think that's enough for today." 

"Sure," Casey said, "just let me see my painting first." He curled his free hand around the armrest, and hooked his ankles around the legs of the chair, an uncontrollable fury bubbling up within him. 

In the end, it took three nurses to pin down his flailing, scrawny limbs, while trying to avoid his snapping teeth. As the needle sunk into his hip, he had one blazingly clear thought: 

_They're doing this to me on purpose._

_____

His parents finally succeeded in getting him a weekend pass. His dad fastened him into the seatbelt like he had when Casey was small. Casey turned to watch the building fade out of sight, and as soon as it did, he twisted back around to address his parents. 

"They're doing this to me on purpose," he blurted out, and his mother turned around with fear on her face. His father's eyes flickered to him in the rearview mirror. 

"Casey, sweetheart," his mother said, "they're trying to make you better." 

"No," Casey said firmly. "You have to listen to me. Something is wrong. They give me drugs so I can't think. Strange men come to ask me questions. They lie to me. They're not trying to help me." 

"Why wouldn't they try to help you, Casey?" his father asked calmly. "Why wouldn't they want you to get better?" 

He almost said, "Because they know it's true," but caught himself, and instead said lamely, "I don't know." 

His mother reached out and patted his knee. "You're going to be all right, Casey," she said, and he could see tears in her eyes. "Your doctor says you're working very hard. We're proud of you. You just have to keep trying, Casey." 

His parents would never believe him, Casey realized. Why would they? He knew what he sounded like. 

"OK, Mom," he said, and she smiled. 

_____

After dinner, he watched a movie with his parents, and then said he was tired. He kissed his mother on the cheek, and hugged his father. 

"Here, Casey," his mom said, and handed him several pills. "Your medicines." He smiled, and took them, and said good night. 

In the bathroom, he locked the door. His dad had hidden his razor above the medicine cabinet. Casey pulled the blade out and ran it up both arms, wrist to elbow. Then he sat down on the floor to wait. 

_____

His mom was screaming. His dad was shouting. There were lots of loud voices. Then there was nothing. 

When he woke up, in a regular hospital this time, his bandaged arms were tied to the bed. 

"Casey, Casey," his mom said, and he knew he had broken her heart forever. She touched his face with a trembling hand, then turned from him and buried her face in his father's shoulder. Over her head, his dad just looked at Casey, so grieved that for the first time in many years, Casey could see that he was loved. 

_____

"This is for your own good," they said, back at That Place, and put the hard rubber bit in his mouth. 

_____

There was a long, white space after that in Casey's mind, like several blank pieces of paper suddenly in the middle of a book. It ended when he opened his eyes and saw a man in a gray suit leaning over him, smoking a cigarette. He smelled the smoke first, and thought, _Zeke_. But then he saw the man, peering into his face dispassionately, and he thought, _She's gotten them all. I'm the only one left. And they want me too._

As he screamed and clawed and fought with all his tiny fury, he heard the smoking man say to his doctor, "I think our work here is done."


	3. Stokely

November 1998  
Herrington, Ohio

There was no discussion of rehab or counseling. Her parents picked her up from the police station, and they drove home in silence. 

"Your piece of crap friend went to prison," her dad said one day at breakfast, reading the morning newspaper. Stokely didn't answer. 

"That boy," her mother said angrily one day, chain-smoking over the kitchen sink, "the crazy one, he called here once, didn't he? School project, he said. I'll just bet it was." Stokely kept on walking, and locked herself in her room. 

Her dad banged open her door in the middle of the night once. "What the hell did you kids do with the bodies?" he demanded, looming over the bed. "I knew you were a lot of trouble, but what kind of kid kills her teachers?" 

"We didn't kill anyone," Stokely said, but she could hear the lie, and her father stormed out, slamming the door in disgust. 

The day of Elizabeth Burke's memorial service, more than two months after she went missing, Stokely's mother watched the coverage on the local news, then turned to her daughter and said, "I think it's best if you left." 

She watched her pack, as if she thought Stokely might steal something that didn't belong to her. "Where am I supposed to go?" she asked, on the porch, bag in hand. 

"That's your problem, isn't it?" her mother said, and shut the door. 

Her dad was in the drive, leaning against his truck. "Are you going to let her do this?" Stokely asked, walking up to him. 

"Here," he said, and handed her some folded bills. "Maybe being on your own will straighten you out," he said gruffly, and went inside the house. 

It was $200. Stokely walked up to the local diner and sat at the counter and drank coffee. When she'd sat long enough that the waitress was starting to give her nervous looks, she left and walked aimlessly until she came to the bridge. 

She walked out to the middle of it and looked down at the swirling waters beneath her. She had a fleeting thought of jumping, but teen suicide seemed so cliché, so Heathers. Instead, she crossed the river, and hunkered down at the side of the road, arms about her knees. 

She had an older brother whom she had not seen in three years. She wasn't even sure what city he lived in anymore. Her mother had a sister in Cincinnati, but Stokely was willing to bet there was no room at that inn. 

If that idiot Casey had known how to keep his mouth shut and hadn't gotten himself carted off by men in white coats, he would have taken her in, she thought, and added resentment to the myriad of emotions she felt about Casey. If that jackass Zeke hadn't left homemade drugs scattered all over his parents' garage and gotten himself incarcerated, he would have let her crash. Resentment was a big part of what she already felt about Zeke, so she didn't chew that over much. 

If Marybeth hadn't been a goddamn alien, Stokely could have gone to her house. _It'll be just like we're sisters,_ she heard that fawning Southern accent say in delight. _I've never had a lesbian sister. We're going to have so much fun!_

Even if Delilah weren't off to boarding school, Stokely would have just as soon clawed her own eyes out as asked Miss Teen America for help. 

So, then. 

"I need a place to stay," she said when Stan opened the door. She held her chin up proudly, but then, while he stared at her, she suddenly felt awkward and embarrassed. "Just for a night or two," she said, adding in a trailing voice, "My parents kind of . . . kicked me out." 

"Yeah," Stan said. "Come in." 

_____

Stan's parents weren't the type to throw a teenaged girl out into the street after dark, but she could smell their fear as she sat at the kitchen table and they whispered in the living room. Stan's younger brother and sister stared at her as if she were some strange specimen to be examined. From the other room, she heard Stan say, "Dad, no, she's not -- look, it's OK." 

Stokely got up and went into the other room. "I'm clean," she said awkwardly. "I mean, I'm not on drugs or anything. I'm not in any trouble. I just -- I'll find someplace else tomorrow. Or I could leave. I've got some money, I could get a room someplace." 

Stan's mother gave her a forced smile and took a deep breath. "Stokely, dear, have you had dinner?" When Stokely stared blankly at her, she said, "I'll make you a plate," and went into the kitchen. 

_____

Then she was a Rosado. After she'd spent a week on the couch, Stan gave her his room and moved into the bottom bunk in his brother's room. "I can't stay here like this," she said, watching him clear dresser drawers for her. 

"Do you have anywhere else to go?" he asked, not looking at her. When she didn't answer, he said, "That's what I thought," and carried out a stack of clothes. 

Stan's parents were hesitant with her, most likely waiting for the other shoe to drop. But when she didn't show up to dinner tweaking, when she went to school and got good grades, when she was polite and quickly did any chores asked of her, they began to warm up. 

Stokely scrubbed her face and cleaned the chipped nail polish off her fingernails. She wore the tamest of her clothing, and when Stan's mother convinced Stokely to let her take her shopping, she picked out ordinary jeans, and even let Stan's mom buy her a pastel sweater set. She looked in the mirror and wasn't certain whom she was seeing, but then, that had been true before, too, so maybe it didn't matter much after all. 

Stan's sister, Cathy, was a freshman at Herrington, and seemed to consider having Stokely in her house part of a campaign specifically directed at ruining Cathy's social life for the next four years. Stokely did her best to stay out of her way, at school and at home. Cathy could make high-pitched sounds with her voice that gave Marybeth in full-blown alien form a run for her money. 

Matthew, age 11, taught Stokely to play his Sega, and thought her ultimately cool. There were many days when Matthew was Stokely's favorite person on the planet. 

Stan kept to himself. They had only talked once between the time his parents had shipped him off to a 28-day program and when Stokely had knocked at his front door, when they had bumped, literally, into each other in the hall at school. 

"Hey," Stan had said, and had sounded happy for all of a second. 

"Walk much?" Stokely said, and was rewarded with a half-smile. 

"You all right?" Stan asked. 

"Yeah. You?" she answered. Already, the flow of students was parting around them, the whispers starting. 

"Yeah," he said, and walked on. 

One Saturday night, she was playing Sega on the living room floor, Matthew sound asleep beside her, when Stan came in and sat on the couch, watching her play in silence. Finally, never looking up from the game, Stokely said, "Are we going to talk like normal people ever again? Or are we going to live in the same house and act like we don't know each other? Just so I know what to expect." 

Stan shifted on the couch, then said quietly, "I could use some help with my English paper." 

Stokely paused the game. "Yeah?" she asked, looking at him. 

"Yep," Stan said. 

"All right," she said, and impulsively reached out a hand for him. 

"Yes, we are," he answered, and took her fingers in his.


	4. Zeke

October 1998-November 1999  
Chillicothe, Ohio

After taking on parasitic alien invaders, 18 months in a minimum-security prison was a cakewalk. The first time someone called Zeke "boy" and came at him, Zeke slammed the man face-first into the cement wall so hard he broke his nose. He spent two weeks in solitary for that, but it was the last time anyone came at Zeke intending to bend him over the nearest table. 

_Might as well not waste the time,_ Zeke decided, and set about learning the strange code of conduct and social order of prison. He established contacts, associates, colleagues, but cautiously, and never at real cost to himself. Networking, he thought of it, and it amused him to think that he was finally using a skill both his parents wielded so effectively in the businesses and social worlds. 

_____

The suited men had not given Zeke their names when they came to see him before his court dates. 

"We could make things easier for you," they said. "All we ask in return is some simple information about the alleged events in Herrington. And some other, minor commitments from you. We hate to see a bright young life thrown away." 

_Come work for us, and you don't have to go to prison,_ was the subtext, and Zeke regarded them with hooded eyes. For the first time, it occurred to him that the events in Herrington might be part of a greater whole. 

"No, thanks," Zeke answered the men smoothly. "I hate to see bright young lives thrown away, too." 

"Have it your way," they said, and never came back. 

_____

The next suited man showed up at the prison on a Saturday in November. This one gave Zeke a business card: Fox Mulder, Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

"Dude, this is your name?" Zeke asked, amused out of his bored persona for a moment. 

"You can't make that stuff up," the FBI man said. "You want to tell me about Herrington, Zeke? About Marybeth?" 

"Not in the slightest," Zeke said, and offered the card back. The man stood up from the table and jerked his chin at the outstretched card. 

"Keep it," he said. "Someday, you might want to tell your story to someone who will believe it." 

Zeke kept the card. 

_____

Stokely was the only person who ever sent him mail, sardonic, biting letters that somehow still seemed affectionate to him. Zeke felt a halfhearted hope that she and Stan would hit it off, that they would come out all right in the end, but, really, he found he didn't care all that much either way. 

He had another halfhearted hope that someday he would have the chance to hit Delilah Profitt right on her perfect Estée Lauder lips and split them open, but even the strange mixture of satisfaction, lust and righteousness that fantasy sparked only held fleeting interest for Zeke. 

_Casey's own damn fault,_ he thought when Stokely wrote to him about the institution. _Stubborn little prick._

He meant for that to be the last thought he gave to Casey, but his mind would stray back there when unguarded, and he was always surprised by the grudging respect it afforded Casey for not backing down. 

He really didn't scan through Stokely's letters looking for mention of Casey before sitting down to read them properly. What was Casey to him, anyway? Zeke had his own problems right now. 

_____

In prison, everybody had a conspiracy theory, the object of which was to lock them up for something they didn't do. 

Zeke didn't buy into it. He was in prison for peddling minor, homemade drugs on school grounds in a state that had a zero tolerance law for drug dealers in school zones. But that didn't mean that his being in prison was not convenient for certain parties. 

Not buying into it was not the same as discounting it. After what he'd seen, Zeke didn't think he would discount anything out-of-hand again in his life. He listened to the theories, the stories, the tall tales, the myths. He filed them neatly away, and waited to see if any of them would someday connect in a pattern. 

_____

Stokely never talked about what had happened in her letters, but she did recommend books to Zeke. Finney, Heinlein, Campbell, Foster. 

Zeke thought they were all crap, but he read every word. 

_____

He got out five months early on good behavior. His mother met him in the parking lot, which was a surprise, since he hadn't called her. 

"Well, well, look at you, a free man," she said as he walked up. She was leaning against the car, smoking a cigarette. 

"Don't tell me you flew in just for this special event," Zeke said, and grabbed her pack off the hood. She offered him her lighter. 

"It's not every day one's son completes his first successful prison term," she said. "I thought it at least deserved dinner with your mother." 

She'd brought him clothes, and on the way back to Herrington, they stopped at a nice restaurant. Zeke had the steak. 

His mother watched him with her sharp, cutting eyes, appraising, assessing, deciding. Back in the car, she said, "I'm flying back to London in the morning." 

Zeke wondered for a brief moment if his father was there, or where else he might be, but decided not to ask. 

"I won't be back until after New Year's," his mother continued. "So the house is yours until then." 

"But not after, right, Mom?" he asked, the name sounding like an insult off his tongue. 

She lit a cigarette, eyes never wavering from the road. "You've got full access to your trust now," she said. "Try not to burn through it too rashly." 

"Nothing says I love you like a trust fund," Zeke answered, and stole another one of her cigarettes. 

_____

She was gone before he got up in the morning. On the kitchen counter were $1,000 cash and the keys to her car, parked in the garage. Two business cards were beside them; one was for their lawyer in Columbus, so he could get to the trust money. The other was plain white; on it in black type was a telephone number with a New York City area code. Zeke picked it up and flipped it over, but there were no clues to be found. He put it in his jacket, right next to the FBI man's card. Then he put the money in his wallet. 

He lit a cigarette, picked up the car keys, and went outside and stood in the drive. He surveyed the sky, checking the weather. 

"So, what now?" he said aloud, and was surprised at the answer.


	5. Outta Here

November 1999  
Herrington, Ohio

Casey was watching cartoons from the bed when Mrs. Connor brought Zeke in. 

"He's getting better, a little at a time," Mrs. Connor said as she finger-combed Casey's hair. "It's slow, but he's making progress. His doctors are very pleased." 

Zeke knew that he should reply appropriately, but his tongue was a dead weight in his mouth, and instead he just let his eyes roam over Casey's room. Black-and-white photos from high school, unmistakably Casey's work, were pinned up on the walls. Beside them were childish paintings in bright colors, the contrast in color startling. Zeke leaned in to see one and found that it was from a paint-by-number book. 

The windows had child safety locks on them, and the room locked from the outside. 

"Casey, sweetheart, look who's here," Mrs. Connor said, leaning over to look at her son's face. "It's your friend Zeke." 

The startling blue eyes were glossy and stared vacantly at the television. He was scarecrow-thin, more so than ever, his face pale and gaunt. Casey had the chewed-up, stubby fingers of one hand in his mouth, but rather than worrying the nails, he was resting them against his lips. There was drool on his chin. 

He was wearing, Zeke noted with a final horror, a Herrington High sweatshirt. 

"Hey, man," Zeke said softly. 

Mrs. Connor reached out to smooth Casey's hair. It was shorter than it had been in high school, and it stuck up at odd angles from his head. Like Casey mussed it with his fingers often. Like Casey pulled at it often. 

She had balked when she'd answered the door, blocking the entrance to the house with her body and the half-open door. Zeke had put on his best, "I'm reformed, really," face, and had politely said that Stokely had written to him that Casey was back at home, and that he'd been so pleased to hear Casey was doing better.

At that, and at Stokely's name, Mrs. Connor's face had softened, and her hand had loosened its grip on the door. "He has asked about you before, Zeke, about how you are doing," she'd said, and Zeke knew he was in even before she'd conceded with, "I suppose it won't hurt, this one time. It will be nice for Casey to see an old friend."

"Can you say hi to Zeke, sweetie?" Mrs. Connor now prompted Casey, and then gently pulled his hand out of his mouth. Casey blinked at her, struggling to focus his eyes, and Mrs. Connor turned his head with a hand to his chin. "Zeke's come to visit you, Casey," she told her son, and Casey's vacant eyes wandered over Zeke without interest. 

"Hi, Zeke," he said absently, and put his fingers back in his mouth. 

From the pleased look on Mrs. Connor's face, Casey did not often achieve appropriate vocalization. Zeke sat down in the desk chair and leaned forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped in front of him lest he lose control of them. "Hey, buddy," he croaked. "Long time no see." 

Mrs. Connor offered, of all things, to make Zeke coffee. Casey was drooling on himself and watching fucking cartoons, and she was going to make coffee. Something stirred inside Zeke, underneath the disaffection and apathy, something that had slept uneasily through the past months. 

"Coffee would be great, Mrs. Connor," he said. 

"Good, I'll just go make it, and you can talk to Casey for a bit," she said. "Not too long; too much stimulus stresses him. But, anyway, I'll be right back." 

Once she had scurried downstairs to the kitchen, Zeke leaned closer to Casey. 

"Casey, man, what the fuck?" he asked, but there was no reaction. Casey continued to stare blankly at the television, and following his gaze, Zeke could tell that he wasn't even really looking at the screen, but at some blank spot on the wall. 

Casey wasn't a Zeke Tyler. He wasn't a born genius, of the type of IQ that actually made teachers uncomfortable. But he was a really smart kid. He'd been put up a grade in elementary school. He'd been a sure bet for valedictorian of their senior class. He was going to have his pick of colleges, where hopefully he would have finally been able to cast off the geek stigma that had followed him at Herrington. 

And now he was watching Scooby-Doo and drooling on himself. 

Zeke found the remote control on the desk and flipped the channel. Casey didn't react. The quickening thing inside Zeke coiled and hissed. A surge of white-hot anger flashed through him, and then manifested itself at Casey. 

"Casey," he said sharply. "Pay attention here," and he reached out and yanked Casey's fingers out of his mouth. 

He could feel it under his own fingers, fastened around Casey's scrawny wrist, and he knew what it was, but he looked anyway, reluctantly. A scar, a nasty, raised scar, on Casey's wrist, running up underneath the sweatshirt. Zeke didn't have to check to know it had a pair on his other arm. 

"What did they do?" he whispered to Casey, and knew suddenly that he now had his own conspiracy theory. "What did they do?" he said again, and stood up as the thing inside him, angry and righteous and protective and bound and determined, came howling to life. Zeke's hands twitched as blood roared in his ears; the last time he had felt like this, he had ripped a paper-cutter off its anchor and done his best to chop Mr. Furlong's head right off with it. 

If he'd stopped to think about it, he never would have done it. But then, Zeke had never been one for thinking things through, not when his instincts were screaming out crystal-clear instructions. 

Casey's sneakers were on the floor in front of the bed, and Zeke stooped to put them on. He listened intently to the sounds of Mrs. Connor in the kitchen, blithely brewing her coffee while her son drooled on himself and wandered some forsaken landscape in his mind. 

"Hey, Casey," Zeke whispered, tying the laces, "you want to take a ride with me?" 

Casey didn't react, so Zeke fastened a hand about one of Casey's upper arms and tugged. Casey came immediately, still not looking at Zeke. He was used to being handled, Zeke realized sickly, used to blindly moving the way someone wanted him to. 

"Come on, buddy, let's take a little ride," he whispered. "It'll be fun." 

Getting down the stairs was the worst, because Casey took them one step at a time, like a toddler would, both hands on the banister. Zeke was tempted to pick him up and haul him out, but Mrs. Connor might hear, and there'd be no explaining that, there would be no second chance if he blew this. 

They finally reached the first floor, and he guided Casey into the anteroom, pausing for a moment to fumble through the coats until he found one that looked like it was Casey's. _Clothes,_ he thought, _clothes and medicine and his things and screw it all there isn't time._

Coat in one hand, Casey's arm in the other, Zeke eased the door open and maneuvered Casey outside. Casey shuffled forward obediently. Zeke carefully shut the door and seconds later, guided Casey into the shotgun seat with a hand on the back of Casey's neck, then reached over to belt him in and shut the door. 

That morning, he had missed the rumble of the GTO, but now he was grateful for the silent running of the Toyota. Out of the drive and up the street and he was driving to who knows where but away from here, they were never coming back here, no one was ever getting their hands on this kid again, not even over Zeke's dead body. 

"See, Casey, just a little ride," he said, forcing himself to exhale and relax his fingers on the steering wheel. Casey was placid in the passenger seat, staring out the side window as Herrington slipped by. 

_____

He didn't think Casey understood, but he felt like he should give him the option. 

"You can go home, if you want to, Casey," he said, after they'd crossed the Ohio border. They'd just driven through a McDonald's and Casey, contentedly sucking down a milkshake, didn't answer. 

"If you want to go back to your parents," Zeke clarified. "But I gotta know it's what you really want, because if I take you back, it's all over. For both of us." 

"I want more ice cream," Casey said, the last drops of milkshake disappearing through the straw. 

"Do you understand any of this, Casey?" Zeke asked softly, but he knew the answer. He handed Casey his own milkshake, and kept driving.


	6. America, Deconstructed

November 1999-July 2003

It turned out to be a lucky thing that Zeke had gone to prison after all. 

In every major city in the United States, he could find a guy who knew a guy who was buddies with a guy who'd known Zeke in prison. Which meant that Zeke could work, if that's what you wanted to call it. Small-time drug dealing, petty theft, and delivering unidentified but undoubtedly illegal packages would be another way of describing how Zeke scraped together enough cash to keep them housed and fed. 

Someone once offered him $5,000 to kill someone. He had no idea if that was the going rate for homicide, but Zeke declined anyway. 

Another man once offered him $100 for an hour alone with Casey, and Zeke broke the man's jaw in response. 

Fast jobs that paid cash became his specialty. He didn't mind additional physical danger if it meant extra money, because extra money meant they had just that much longer before they were forced to resurface in the dregs of society and find more work. 

Some nights, Zeke stayed up smoking and thinking and mentally cursing the fact that somewhere, securely locked away, was a trust fund large enough that he and Casey would not have had to worry about money for years upon years, if only he'd thought things through with more clarity before he'd tied Casey's sneakers and turned them into fugitives. 

Zeke didn't worry for himself, out on the job, but he did worry about what would happen to Casey if Zeke were hurt, killed or arrested. He finally wrote Stokely's name and telephone number on an index card and put it in Casey's wallet, right next to the fake ID, just in case. 

_____

Zeke didn't like calling Stokely, but sometimes he needed things, needed help, and she was the safest person to ask. And sometimes Casey just needed to talk to someone other than Zeke. 

He liked going to Stokely even less, but sometimes he was too tired to think of what else to do. She'd never turn them in, he didn't worry about that, and Stan could glower and bitch all he wanted, Zeke knew he wasn't going to turn them in either. But he did wonder about tapped phones and watching eyes and bugged apartments. They were especially careful on the few occasions they went to Chicago, but Zeke knew you could never be careful enough. 

_____

"You can never be careful enough, Zeke," the one-armed man had said, when Zeke asked how he'd found them. 

He had said his name was Alex Krycek, and he wanted Zeke to go fight aliens. Zeke had laughed near-hysterically, in the end clinging to the edge of the table to stay steady, because he knew it wasn't a joke. 

Then he'd taken the one-armed man up on his offer of a drink, and then, figuring that the one-armed man with the gun was either going to let them go or not, regardless of Zeke's actions, had gotten quite drunk in one of a thousand seedy motel rooms that they'd stayed in. The one-armed man sipped his whiskey and watched patiently, and in the end, Zeke had told him the whole, uncensored story before passing out. 

He woke up to find a terrified Casey huddled up in a chair, watching cartoons with the one-armed man. His mouth tasted bitter and regretful, and the thought that this man could have done anything, anything at all to Casey while Zeke had slept in an alcohol-laden stupor, made him dash to the toilet and heave. 

Casey and the one-armed man had not moved when he finally came out of the bathroom. The one-armed man looked at him levelly and said, "Don't be too hard on yourself. Maybe you just knew you could trust me." 

"You don't seem like the kind of man people can trust," Zeke responded and the one-armed man had smiled, amused. 

"I'm not," he said. 

Zeke went over to the small table, smoothing down Casey's bedhead on his way. Casey, fixated on the television and gnawing his fingers to the bone, didn't acknowledge him. Zeke sat down heavily and leaned across the table. 

"Alien rebels and a shadow government conspiracy," he said dully. "Whaddya know." 

"You don't quite fit," the one-armed man said. "Some of us think it was an experiment. They've been conquerors for a long time, and there are assuredly more than one species in the mix here. What happened at Herrington was unique, but it was also controlled; we've found clear evidence of that." 

"An experiment," Zeke said in the same dull voice, and looked over at Casey, watching SpongeBob with huge eyes. 

"Yeah," the one-armed man said softly, and he sounded almost sympathetic. "I'm not promising you anything, but we'd try to help Casey. He'd be an asset, himself, if he were well. He'd be taken care of. And you wouldn't be out here on your own anymore. Besides, how long do you think you can do this? How long until something happens to him that you can't handle?" 

"Why me?" Zeke asked, still watching Casey. 

The one-armed man snorted. "How many people do you think are willing to join up with a counter-conspiracy aligned with alien rebels?" he asked. "Recruitment isn't exactly our strong suit. You're smart, Zeke. We could use you." 

"Yeah," Zeke said. In his chair, Casey had abandoned his now-bloody fingers and had moved on to scratching at his arms vigorously. Zeke stood up. "Thanks for the drink," he told the one-armed man, and crossed the room to stop Casey from hurting himself. 

"I'm not going to waste time tracking you down again," the one-armed man said. "If I walk out of here, you're on your own." 

"I'm always on my own," Zeke answered. He didn't bother to look when the door clicked shut, already relieved and regretful all at the same time. 

_____

On bad nights, Zeke would get out the FBI man's card and the card his mother had left him, set them down in front of him, and sit and stare, waiting for the right answer to come to him. He couldn't tell anymore who were the good guys and who were the bad guys. If it had just been him, he would have been willing to gamble, to take a chance that this wasn't the right decision, but he couldn't do that, not with Casey. 

On one of the worst nights, the night that Casey broke his own fingers trying to force his way through the door, and blackened Zeke's eye with a flailing elbow, the night Zeke held Casey down, screaming and clawing, and force-fed so many sleeping pills into him that he was afraid Casey might not wake up, Zeke looked at the cards for more than an hour, and then picked up the phone. 

"Scully," a woman said on the other end. Zeke didn't question why she was answering what he presumed was a business number at one in the morning. 

"I'm looking for Agent Mulder," he said, and there was silence at the other end. 

"Agent Mulder's not here," the woman said finally. "Is there something I can help you with?" 

"No," Zeke said quickly. "Do you know when he'll be back?" 

After another long pause, the woman said, "Agent Mulder is, he's, Agent Mulder is missing." Then she added, "Do you need help?" but Zeke was already slamming down the phone and ripping it out of the jack and sending it flying across the room because suddenly he knew, he knew, that had been the guy, that had been the person who would have helped them, and he'd come to Zeke before any of this, before they were fugitives, before Casey's brain was fried beyond salvation, he'd come to Zeke and had wanted to help and Zeke had sent him packing and now he was gone, they had gotten him, and Zeke never questioned the absolute belief in this truth that now weighted down upon him in all its horrific irony. 

The world went black around him, and when he knew himself again, the table was flipped over and a chair was smashed. Casey, on his stomach on the bed, drooling onto his pillow, didn't appear to have twitched. Zeke's palm was bleeding; apparently, he'd smashed the chair with his bare hands.

He went into the bathroom and carefully cleaned and bandaged the hand. He splashed cold water on his bruised face, and then leaned over the sink, arms braced, suddenly too exhausted to move. 

He thought about calling the number again, and talking to the woman, but it wasn't really an option, he didn't have a clue who she was. Then he thought about the other card. 

"Russian roulette, man," he told himself, and finally stood up straight. In the other room, he picked up the white card and looked closely at it. Then he put it back in his jacket, and covered Casey up with another blanket. 

They were in Maine, and it got cold.


	7. Casey

November 1999-July 2003

"Where am I, Zeke?" Casey whispered, arms encircling his head, face pressed into his drawn-up knees. "Where am I?" 

He was in the dry bathtub of a grimy motel room in Pensacola, Florida, but Zeke knew that in no way answered the question. 

"I don't know, buddy," he said, and laid a tentative hand on Casey's back. "I wish I knew how to find you." 

_____

That was the broken Casey, the one who destroyed Zeke with every breath. The Casey who didn't know where he was or what was real, who fumbled about in his mind, clumsily examining the pieces of his life and knowing that they would never fit back together again. 

This Casey made grief rise up in Zeke's throat, where it stayed without release, choking him until he couldn't breathe. This Casey was so far removed from the one Zeke had known before that he was something different altogether. 

This Casey was hollow, and Zeke's greatest fear was that a gust of wind would scatter him someday, and Zeke wouldn't even be left with an empty shell. 

_____

The psychotic Casey did not surface often, but when he did rear up, it was without warning, and always with violence. This Casey fought ferociously, furious at what had been done to him, determined that it would never happen again. He'd broken Zeke's ribs once, kicking hard and purposefully. He'd clawed grooves in Zeke's face and neck, those gnawed fingernails somehow finding purchase. He would scream and curse and bite and spit, and his eyes were narrowed blue slits of revenge. 

Zeke loved this Casey. 

Practicality forced him to sedate this Casey into oblivion with ill-gotten pharmaceuticals, and this Casey had resulted in more hours of first aid care to both of them than Zeke cared to contemplate, but still, every time he had a run-in with Casey's rage, Zeke was reminded that Casey was alive, that he was still willing to fight, that he was not beaten. 

Unfortunately, this Casey never recognized Zeke, or did not recognize him as an ally, and inevitably engaged first in fight, and then in flight, if he had the chance. Zeke learned whole new restraint techniques with this Casey; he was slippery and lithe, and if he got away from you, he was fast. 

He hated having to subdue that raging spirit, but after, once he had caught and conquered it, Zeke could stroke Casey's hair and look into his glazed and drooping eyes and whisper, "Don't ever let them beat you down, Casey. Don't ever stop fighting." 

_____

The child Casey was the one Zeke lived with most of the time, and he both loved and hated him. He loved him because this was Casey, in some form, this was what was left, and traces of the old Casey were visible still, but he hated him because this was just a shade of what Casey should have been. 

You couldn't leave this Casey alone for a minute. He had strange, almost autistic behaviors that made Zeke believe that whatever had been done to Casey had left him with permanent neurological dysfunctions. Casey felt imaginary itches all over his body, and would scratch at them until his skin was raw and bleeding. He yanked at his hair, and sometimes pulled tufts of it out. He chewed his fingers until they bled. He ground his teeth and gnawed at his lower lip. His fingers restlessly fidgeted with anything he picked up, and his knees bounced with nervous energy. 

Zeke thought it was a stroke of genius on his part the day he gave Casey a cigarette to stop his endless scratching and pulling and jiggling, but he soon realized the idiocy of that move. Then Casey wanted cigarettes, and would steal Zeke's when denied, chain smoking until he got sick if Zeke was inattentive. 

Some days, Zeke didn't think he was fit to care for a goldfish, and here he was with this person, this person who had a myriad of strange needs and problems. 

Meals were always a special treat. Casey only wanted to eat what he wanted at that moment, which could easily change by the time the food was prepared. He was not averse, in the right mood, to ruining, throwing or blaspheming food. 

And then, regardless of mood swings and without forewarning, Casey randomly threw up what he'd eaten. 

He was scrawny, and though he grew about an inch in the first year after they left Herrington, Zeke wondered if poor health had stolen a belated spurt and a few inches from Casey. 

The child Casey whined and cried and manipulated until Zeke was ready to throttle him into silence and submission. This Casey also had real fears and phobias and could require endless coaxing from Zeke to perform the simplest of tasks. Zeke was patient when Casey was frightened, but he could be exasperated too. Going through a turnstile shouldn't have to take 10 minutes. Getting Casey to clean his ears once a week shouldn't be a half-day activity. 

But the child Casey could also show hints of what Casey had been. He could be gleefully, goofily happy, doing something as simple as watching television with Zeke. He could see strange beauty in ordinary things, and could still capture them on film. He showed sudden moments of understanding what had happened to them, to him, and he was not defeated by it. 

The child Casey often understood Zeke's moods better than Zeke did. He trusted Zeke. He loved Zeke, simply and wholly. He needed Zeke. 

And this Casey understood that Zeke needed Casey, just as much as Casey needed Zeke, and once promised, eyes large and open, that he would never leave him. 

_____

The real Casey was hard to find, but he showed up every once in a while. Once, Zeke was driving through Pennsylvania when suddenly from the passenger seat, Casey said, "When the fuck did you let me start smoking?" 

Zeke glanced at him sideways, but he already knew who it was. The real Casey's voice pattern was different, crisp and slicing and aware. His posture was different, too. His muscles were at once more relaxed and more alert. The real Casey's eyes were keen and piercing and determined. 

This was whom Casey would have become, without interference. This was someone who wasn't afraid to do what had to be done, who could see the lie from the truth, and who had a deep well of compassion born of years of playground beatings. This Casey, this Casey -- Zeke loved this Casey, and would have followed him anywhere, into any danger. This Casey was meant to lead. 

Casey was staring at the cigarette in his fingers with distaste, and Zeke said, "You kept clawing at yourself, jiggling the whole car. It was driving me nuts." 

"Oh, but lung cancer, that's not going to bother you," Casey said dryly. "Thanks, man, that's great." He leaned forward and crushed the cigarette out in the ashtray. Then he looked out the window and asked, "Pennsylvania, right?" 

"Yeah," Zeke said. Sometimes the real Casey would surface knowing everything that was happening, that had happened, and sometimes he emerged missing months of memory. 

"Yeah," Casey echoed and sighed. He was quiet for a moment, then said, "I'm sorry I crawled under the bed this morning and you had to drag me out." 

"You were just scared," Zeke said. "You didn't know where we were going." He was always tempted to speak about the other Caseys in the third person to the real Casey -- _He was just scared. He didn't know where we were going_ \-- but he knew they were all one and the same person. Casey didn't suffer from multiple personality syndrome, or schizophrenia, he just had different levels of brain functioning that brought different parts of him to the forefront. 

Zeke felt fairly certain that if only someone knew how to fix Casey's drug-damaged, electro-shocked brain, they could have this Casey all the time. But finding someone who could help like that, who could be trusted to help like that -- Zeke did not think that would ever come to pass. 

"Where are we going?" Casey asked. 

_Nowhere,_ Zeke thought. _Anywhere. You tell me, Casey. Show me where to go._

Instead, he said, "West. We're going west." 

"All right, then," Casey said. "West it is."


	8. A Sorta Fairytale

June 2001-May 2004  
Chicago, Illinois

"We should just get married," Stan said, and Stokely only paused for a beat before saying, "Sure." 

They got married in a small, family-only ceremony at St. Jude's in Herrington two days after Stan's 20th birthday. Stokely wore a simple white dress that Mrs. Rosado had bought her, and surprised herself by not feeling silly in it. The family went out to dinner afterwards, and Stan's parents paid for a honeymoon in Mexico as their wedding present. 

Stan had finished a two-year program in construction trades at Herrington Community College, so when the new semester at the University of Chicago began, he came with Stokely. They had a tiny, one-bedroom apartment that shook when the El went by, and between Stokely's scholarship and the job that Stan found, they had enough money to get by on their own. Their furniture was secondhand, their car was pushing 75,000 miles, and the only place they went on vacation was back to Herrington. 

In other words, the American dream, that Stokely had never imagined she would want or could have, and she loved every moment of it so much it frightened her. Because Stan couldn't see it, Stan didn't realize, but Stokely knew that they were careening along a ride that had started on a September day at Herrington High, and she didn't think the two of them could survive the crash at the end. 

_____

"Hi," Casey said softly when she picked up the phone, fumbling in the dark and half-asleep. 

"Hey, you," Stokely answered. "Sleep much?" 

Casey laughed, and the sound was painful. "Not lately," he admitted, then, "I keep slipping away, and I'm afraid if I sleep, I won't still be here when I wake up." 

"Yeah," Stokely breathed, because there wasn't really anything to say to that. He was probably right; she'd seen the different sides of Casey, and she knew that the real Casey clung tight to the world at every chance, only to be yanked away over and over again. 

Beside her in bed, Stan rolled to spoon against her and buried his face in her hair, an arm encircling her waist reassuringly. "Stan says hi," Stokely said into the phone, and Stan made a muffled noise of assent. 

"Zeke sends his love," Casey answered, and in the background, Stokely could hear Zeke muttering something that sounded distinctly unloving. Casey laughed again, more genuinely this time, and Stokely smiled. 

"You both all right?" Stokely asked. 

"We went to the Grand Canyon," Casey said. "Have you seen it? I'd never been. It's overwhelming; there aren't any words big enough for it. It's beautiful, and strange, and stark, and lonely. I bought all this film, but then I didn't take a single picture, because it's something that can't be captured." 

Stokely wondered if Casey knew he was describing himself. 

"I'd like to see it someday," she said quietly, and heard the snap of a lighter on the other end, then Casey inhaling as he dragged on the cigarette. "You should quit smoking, dingbat." 

"It's Zeke's fault," Casey said automatically, then quickly asked, "How's school?" 

"School's good," Stokely said. "I got into the grad program, so I can go straight into it once I've graduated." 

"That's awesome," Casey said in honest delight. "Stokes, that's fantastic." His voice faded a bit as he moved his mouth from the receiver. "Stokely got into graduate school," he said, and she heard Zeke's voice for a second, clear and drawling -- "Cool." 

"I'm -- that makes me so happy, Stokely," Casey said, and suddenly she had to blink away tears. 

"Thanks, Casey," she said. "You should have seen Stan and his parents. You'd have thought I won a Nobel Prize." 

"I'm proud of my smart wife," Stan mumbled as Casey laughed. 

"Yeah, he's just looking forward to the day when you're raking in the big bucks and he can stay home and be a kept man," Casey said, and he sounded so natural, so well, that it hurt somewhere in Stokely's chest. 

"Zeke's yanking on the phone in some Neanderthal attempt to communicate that time is up," Casey was continuing while Stokely tried to get air back in her lungs. "I'm just -- I'm really glad, Stokely." 

"Get some sleep, Casey," she managed to say. 

"Yeah, yeah," he answered, but his voice was fading, and then the phone clicked. 

She put it back in the cradle and then stared into the dim light of the bedroom. Behind her, Stan laid a soft kiss on her shoulder and wiggled to put both arms around her. 

"They're all right," she said, but her voice was shaking. 

"This is what they've chosen," Stan said. "We can't help them if this is how they're going to live." 

"They made the only choices they could, Stan," Stokely answered, but she was tired, and they'd had this fight too many times. 

Stan pressed his nose into her neck. "You don't have to feel guilty for living your own life," he said softly, and then let the matter drop. 

_____

She was majoring in psychology, and Stan didn't realize it, but she spent extra hours at the library poring over books on neurology and pharmaceutical treatments and post-traumatic stress disorder. She'd thought about going the M.D. route, but it took too long, additional years that were too valuable. She was pressing through undergraduate school as quickly as possible, and meant to do the same with graduate school. She'd probably need to barrel all the way through to her Ph.D., but if she had what she needed earlier, she'd stop then. 

They never talked about it, they couldn't talk about it, and so it was easy to let Stan believe the unspoken lie, that her academic focus on adolescents and trauma was her way of working through what had happened, her way of turning it into something good, of helping new generations, so they weren't left alone with the baggage the way that Stan and Stokely had been. It wasn't a complete lie; those things had come into play when Stokely was choosing her path. 

But really, it was Casey, Casey whom she had abandoned, whom she had seen vacant and destroyed at his parents' house, Casey who had told the truths that Stokely had been afraid to tell, Casey who was still so torn and damaged and wrecked that one time when Zeke had shown up on their doorstep with him, she hadn't recognized him for several heartbeats. 

Stan thought she owed it to herself, to work her way through those experiences and turn them into something good in the end, but Stokely knew that she owed it to Casey, to find him a way home.


	9. Minnesota

October 2001-May 2002  
Home

New York was the worst, with the noise and the dangers and the masses of people. Casey had screaming night terrors in New York, and violent temper tantrums, and it had been so long since Zeke had seen the real Casey, he wasn't sure he'd know him anymore. 

Zeke had made the mistake of taking a job that wasn't quick and easy, one that required several weeks and his full concentration. But the payout was huge, and the thought of stretching it out over months and months, without having to worry about finding more work, convinced Zeke in the end. But in New York, he was alone with a frightened, violent and unpredictable Casey, and that didn't make for good working conditions. 

He modified the lock on the bathroom in their seedy little rented room, so that it locked only from the outside, and then Casey-proofed the room. His hands always shook when he clicked the lock shut, before leaving for the job, listening to Casey sob and beg from inside, but he'd done it now, he was in it, and he couldn't walk away, not without making things worse. 

When it was finally over, Zeke had them on a bus out of New York within the hour, headed west with no real purpose. Somehow, they ended up in Chicago, and Zeke slept like he had not slept in weeks. He woke up panicked, groping about the bed for Casey, thinking he had let himself slip, that he had slept too soundly and not paid enough attention. 

He found Casey at the kitchen table with Stan, eating a grilled cheese sandwich with slow caution, but eating nonetheless. Casey hadn't eaten much in New York, and had been as thin when they'd left as when he'd come home from the hospital. Stan could always get Casey to eat, for some reason, even when Zeke or Stokely could not. 

It was the longest they ever stayed with Stan and Stokely, more than two weeks, but by then Zeke was rested and recovered and his instincts were screaming at him to get out of there before their luck ran out and someone worse than Alex Krycek managed to track them down. What he wanted more than anything was to find someplace quiet to hunker down and stay out of sight for a good long time. 

Minnesota was quiet. And if Zeke had thought Ohio was a hick place to live, it had nothing on Minnesota. Cold and empty and perfect. 

The people in Smallville, USA, were good Minnesotans who did not want to involve themselves in other people's business. Zeke found a trailer on a dirt road that sometimes became impassable in the winter, paid the rent on time, was polite to the locals on his rare trips into town, and just laid low. 

Casey hid in the closet their first two days at the trailer, but on the third morning Zeke woke to find Casey curled up tightly against him in bed. Zeke sighed in relief and let himself sleep deeply. 

Licking their wounds, Zeke often thought later about the time in the trailer. Casey's were raw and visible and still bleeding all over everywhere, but Zeke had not known his were so deep or so poorly healed. He liked the quiet, he discovered, and how bright the stars were in Minnesota. He liked whole days spent on the couch with Casey cuddled up against him, the television droning low, the room warm and dim, drowsing when the need took them. He liked reading books in a single setting, with nothing to interrupt him. He liked nowhere to be, no one to report to. 

He liked seeing Casey eat whole meals and get seconds. He liked Casey being aware of his surroundings again, watching movies and actually taking them in, reading books and remembering he had read them. He liked never having to let Casey out of his sight. 

In Minnesota, Casey made some of his few remarks to Zeke about Ohio, and what had happened. It was in Minnesota that Casey first asked Zeke if it had really happened. 

"Yes," Zeke said, and Casey blinked slowly at him, trying to decide if it was better just being crazy. 

It was in Minnesota that Casey picked up a camera again, and turned what looked to Zeke like a bleak and empty landscape into something haunting and beautiful. 

It was in Minnesota that Casey told Zeke that in those last moments, as Marybeth was in her death throes and squirming creatures burrowed into his skin, he had felt nothing but relief that it was over, for good or for ill, and that he'd felt that siren's pull, that feeling of belonging, and it had been good. 

It was in Minnesota that Zeke made his promise to Casey, the one he felt certain would end both their lives someday. 

"If they find us, they're going to take me back to that place," Casey said. This was after the grand mal, when they were snowed in and an emergency room was not even an option. Casey ran into the edges of furniture and doors, his eyes sliding out of focus, and Zeke stayed up long into the night, just watching Casey breathe and making sure he didn't stop. 

"You're never going back there," Zeke answered. 

"You can't promise me that," Casey said, but Zeke knew he could, if he really meant it. 

"Casey," he grabbed both of Casey's hands and waited until Casey looked him in the eyes. "You're never going back there." They looked at each other for a long time, and Casey finally said, "Thank you, Zeke." 

Zeke had a gun, but if it wasn't with them, he always had his hands. Casey was tiny; Zeke knew he could snap his neck clean in one move. If he used the gun, he could use a second bullet on himself. If not, well, then at least he'd saved Casey, in the end. 

When Zeke thought of home, he never thought of Ohio. Instead, he pictured a trailer in Minnesota, at the end of a dirt road.


	10. Never Again

July 2003  
Arizona

They'd always been on borrowed time. Zeke knew that sooner or later, someone would catch up with them. It was merely of question of who, and when.

_____

In Oklahoma City, Zeke pulled into the motel parking lot from the side street and spotted a marked car hidden behind the dumpster. He casually turned around and pulled back out, and as he cruised by the motel, he spotted two unmarked cars with men in suits inside them parked near their door. 

"Zeke, I wanna go back to our room," Casey whined from the passenger seat. "I want to watch TV."

"Not now, Casey," Zeke answered, and headed for the interstate.

In Indianapolis, Zeke was sprawled on a bench at the train station while Casey busily played with a newly acquired secondhand GameBoy when he noticed a flier on the bulletin board. He sat up and crossed the room too suddenly to look at it, and forcefully calmed his breathing and unclenched his hands. 

"Have you seen me?" the flier demanded, and Casey's sophomore picture stared back at Zeke. "Name: Casey Connor. DOB: 05/23/1982. Last seen in Herrington, Ohio, on November 27, 1999, with this man," and there was a high school snapshot of Zeke.

Zeke almost began laughing in quiet hysteria when he realized that the snapshot was Casey's work, but he managed to keep it under control. Instead, he took the flier, folded it up and put it in his pocket before sitting back down. 

In Chicago, they got onto the El and as the doors shut a man slammed against them in a failed attempt to slip inside. He looked straight at Zeke as his lips moved in unheard curses, and as he stepped away from the now-moving car, Zeke saw a gun in a shoulder holster under his jacket. 

They didn't go back to Stokely's for a year after that.

In Los Angeles, Zeke sat in a booth at a bar and talked business with a guy who was married to the sister of a man whose best friend had done time with Zeke and suddenly decided that the guy didn't feel right. When he crawled out the men's room window, he spotted two officers covering the back door. Zeke took alleys back to their room, and they were in Nevada before the end of the day.

"You can never be careful enough, Zeke," he heard the one-armed man say in his head after these close calls, and then he continued, mocking, "How long do you think you can do this? How long until something happens to him that you can't handle?"

Zeke didn't have any answers for the memory-voice in his head, so he usually just told it to fuck off, and kept moving.

_____

In East St. Louis, Zeke came back to their room after a job and Casey wasn't there.

He'd left the child Casey watching TV and fiddling with his GameBoy and had told him to stay put. Even though that Casey didn't always do what Zeke told him to, he was terrified to go anywhere without Zeke, and so he never worried about him wandering off. 

He did hide sometimes, so Zeke tore the room apart, making sure Casey wasn't folded in on himself in some secret spot, but all Zeke found was the GameBoy under the bed.

Casey was nowhere in the hallways of the building, so Zeke started banging on doors and demanding to know if anyone had seen him. "Do you want me to call the police, honey?" an older woman in a robe who wore too much make-up asked him, not unkindly. 

"No, no police," Zeke said, and this was a part of town where if someone said no police, no one would call the police. 

Casey wasn't in the diner next door, or in the alley, or anywhere else on the block. Zeke started methodically expanding his search, until on block four it occurred to him that he could never find Casey this way, and he abruptly sat down on some steps and put his head in his hands.

After he sat and sweated and shook for a bit, he got up and went back to their building. Casey still wasn't there, so Zeke used the pay phone down the hall to call every hospital in the telephone book. None of them had seen anyone of Casey's description. Two of them asked him if he needed the police, and Zeke hung up on them.

He thought about calling Stokely, but he could already hear her screaming, "You fucking lost Casey?" Stokely had not gone ballistic since Ohio, since she'd fired a few shots off at Delilah, but Zeke was willing to bet that this would be the one thing that could set her off again. He was also willing to bet that it would be the one thing that could make Stokely decide to take Casey from him, and he wasn't sure he could stop her.

He thought about calling the numbers on his cards, the FBI man and the white card, but somehow he didn't think this was the kind of help they could offer him.

He thought about calling the people he'd gotten a job with, but the people Zeke worked with were never nice guys, and he didn't really want to tell them a damn thing about Casey.

In the end, he went back out into the street and started looking. Homeless shelters, churches, free health clinics, places some kind stranger may have taken a wandering Casey. The underpass, flophouses, alleys, places some unkind stranger may have taken a wandering Casey. 

He periodically went back to their room, but it never changed. The door was still unlocked, there was still no sign of a struggle, no clue as to where Casey had gone. Their neighbors still didn't know anything.

"You sure about the police, honey?" the robed, made-up woman asked him. "Or maybe you want me to call somebody else? Somebody who might help."

"Not yet," Zeke said, and went back outside.

He found Casey in the 22nd hour, in a teen crisis center four miles from their room, and his relief was so physical that he thought he might vomit, or pass out.

"One of our regular kids brought him in," the middle-aged priest with the mild voice told Zeke as he led him down the hall. "Said he'd been huddled up in a phone booth for a few hours."

"Did you -- did he call anyone?" Zeke asked.

"No," the priest said. "There was a name and number in his wallet, but he said not to call it. He said Zeke would find him. And here you are."

And there was Casey, legs pulled up to his chest in an armchair, tugging at his tufts of hair. "Hey, buddy, hey," Zeke said, and gently grabbed hold of Casey's hands to stop him. "Don't do that, don't hurt yourself."

"Zeke," Casey said, and smiled up at him with such simple faith and trust that it blinded Zeke to everything else for a moment. "Zeke, I got lost."

"Yeah," Zeke answered, and hunkered down in front of Casey. "Where were you going, man? I've been looking everywhere for you."

"I was looking for something," Casey said, "but then I didn't know what it was."

"OK," Zeke breathed, and pulled Casey into a hug.

"Zeke," Casey wrapped his thin arms around him fiercely and made a choked little keening sound back in his throat. "Zeke, how will it end?"

"I don't know," Zeke whispered, "but I'll be there with you."

_____

In the end, when there was no way out, Zeke reached for Casey with steady hands, and fastened them around his throat. He gave Casey one last look, and saw that it was him, really him, all of him, all back together for that brief moment, and Casey smiled and said, "Thank you, Zeke."

"I love you," Zeke said, and some part of him was aware that he was crying, but he couldn't hear it, couldn't hear himself over the pounding on the door and the shouting from outside and the beating of Casey's heart in his ears as he tightened his grip to snap the fragile bones.

The door came smashing in and the sound that sliced through Zeke was so unexpected that he hesitated one fraction of a second more, and lost his chance. Even as he fought the man who tackled him, even as he listened to Casey screaming in abject terror, Zeke heard it again and looked up.

"Stop, Zeke," Delilah repeated, not screaming anymore. "Stop."


	11. Resist or Serve

July 2003  
Arizona to New Mexico

Casey was so far gone that when the people with Delilah got out the syringe, Zeke didn't bother to protest. Instead he just watched as Casey faded from shrieking, clawing frenzy into glazed, drooling oblivion, and the room was finally quiet. 

He wasn't certain what had happened to the men who had been breaking down the door, but there was blood on the sidewalk. These people with Delilah, these were different people. Zeke didn't know who these people were. He wasn't sure he cared.

"Come on, Zeke, let's take a ride," Delilah said, standing in front of him, and he heard himself, long, long ago: Hey, Casey, you want to take a ride with me?

"Where are we going?" he asked, and his voice was strange, twisted and shaking. His hands were shaking too, and his thoughts were all twisted and twirling and coming apart.

"New Mexico," Delilah said. 

"What's in New Mexico?" he asked. 

"The truth," she answered, and walked out, confident he would follow.

_____

Casey stayed not-asleep straight on to morning in the backseat of the SUV, leaning against Zeke and twitching every so often. Zeke stared out the window and thought about nothing at all. In the front seat, Delilah and the man who was driving were silent. 

In New Mexico, they pulled into a drive that led to three trailers and a metal pole barn. "This is the truth, Delilah?" Zeke asked when the vehicle rolled to a stop. "It's in a trailer park?"

Delilah twisted in her seat and gave him a simmering look. She was even better looking now than in high school, he thought. "I've missed you, Zeke," she said, then smiled ferally. 

The trailer she led them into was remarkably clean, with nicer furniture than Zeke would have expected. A hallway led down to his left, but to his right there was an open door, and Zeke could see computers and electronics lining the walls inside. 

He shifted Casey in his arms and looked at the person who had approached them, realizing with surprise that it was a teenaged boy. Short, with thick glasses, buzzed hair and a scar than ran all the way around his head. The boy looked closely at Zeke's face, and then glanced at Casey.

"They're all right," he announced to the other people in the room. "They're who she said they would be."

Just behind him, from where she had stepped after holding the door for him, Zeke thought he felt Delilah let out a small sigh of relief before she put her hand on his back. "Come on," she said quietly. "I'll show you where you can put Casey down."

There were bedrooms down the hallway, and Zeke tucked Casey into an empty bed. He looked around cautiously, seeing clothes in the closet and books on a shelf. "Do you live here, Delilah?" he asked, and was unable to keep disbelief out of his voice.

She smirked at his tone. "No," she admitted. "I live in New York. I came out here for you, Zeke."

"I'm flattered," he drawled. "Where's the bathroom?"

Cold water on his face and the back of his neck steadied him a little. So did leaning his forehead against the medicine cabinet and breathing deeply for several minutes. "Snap out of it," he muttered at his reflection, and was pleased with his hands didn't shake when he dried them.

Delilah was waiting in the hallway outside the bathroom. "You ready?" she asked.

"For what?" Zeke replied, and she didn't answer as she led him back down the hall.

A big man who hadn't been there before was standing in the middle of the living room. The teenaged kid slid by Zeke down the hallway and disappeared. Zeke half turned to follow him, and Delilah laid a hand on his arm. "It's all right," she said. "He'll keep an eye on Casey." Then she steered him toward the man.

"Zeke," she said, "this is Walter Skinner."

_____

"So let me get this straight," Zeke said, rubbing at his weary eyes. "The aliens and these conspirators, they had a plan to colonize Earth and turn us into human-alien hybrids that would be their slaves. But the conspirators were double-crossing them and trying to produce a vaccine that would prevent us from becoming hybrids behind the aliens' backs. And now the conspirators are dead, and other alien races that the first aliens are using as slaves are rising up against them and causing all kinds of chaos. And you guys are working with the rebel aliens to get rid of the first aliens so we all don't turn into hybrid slaves, but in the meantime, the former hangers-on of the conspirators are trying to start a new alliance with the first aliens and get rid of all of you, and the rebel aliens." 

He looked first at Delilah, and then at Skinner. "Does that about cover it?" he asked. 

"Those are the basics," Skinner said tersely. A vein on his forehead was popping. Skinner looked to Zeke like someone in serious need of some relaxation classes.

Zeke drummed his fingers on the table and stared at them for a moment. "And Marybeth?" he asked.

"An experiment, we think," Delilah said in a low voice, and she looked sick. "One of theirs. There are some -- characteristics that indicate that. Remember how the radio didn't work?"

Zeke nodded slowly, and Delilah nodded back. "No one was really leaving Herrington infected that night," she said, and Zeke decided he believed that.

"What does it have to do with us now?" he asked. "What's it have to do with you?" and he jerked his chin at Delilah.

Delilah looked at her hands on the table instead of at Zeke. "I was recruited when I did an internship at the United Nations," she said. "In fact, I'm working there now."

Zeke was too tired, and too fried from the events of the past night to play games with Delilah Profitt, of all people. "So fucking what," he said. "I made $500 delivering a box full of drugs to some hippie Native Americans yesterday. What's any of it got to do with aliens?"

Delilah moved her fingers nervously over the surface of the table and swallowed. Skinner leaned back in his chair, and his face softened a fraction. "She's been an excellent operative," he said. Zeke turned his frustration from Delilah to Skinner and held his hands open -- So what?

"I asked them to come get you," Delilah confessed. "When we got the information that they were tracking you, that they were going to take you, I asked that we come for you instead."

Zeke stared at her, unable to form another question for a moment. Then he said, "What do they want with us?"

"They're afraid of you, Zeke," Skinner said. "And they're afraid of Casey. They underestimated you before. They don't want you at large in the world. You're a loose end, and they want to tie you up."

Zeke studied them both carefully, and then stood up, suddenly full of too many nerves to stay seated. "They want to kill us, you mean," he said, and was answered by two level looks. He paced nervously, running his fingers through his hair. "But what," he asked, still frustrated, "what the fuck do you want with me?"

"Come work for us," Skinner said simply. "We'll protect you both, as best we can. We'll do what we can to get Casey some medical help."

Zeke let out a harsh bark of a laugh. "I've had offers like this before," he said. "I've had people come to me before, saying they could do for me if I did for them. I've been hearing this song since Herrington."

"I know," Skinner said, and stood up. "That's the offer, though. Your decision." He tossed a set of keys from his pocket on the table. "These are yours," he said. "I had someone drive your car from Arizona. Think about it, Zeke. We're not stopping you from walking away. That should tell you something." And he walked out of the trailer.

Zeke looked at Delilah, suddenly aware that he was sweating and breathing hard. She looked cooly back at him. "Sleep on it, Zeke," she said. "Really. Before you keel over. Go lie down with Casey."

"Yeah," Zeke said. His muscles were twitching from fatigue. "Just for a few hours. Then I can --" He made a vague gesture with his hand.

"Sure," Delilah said. "Then you can."

_____

Zeke slept 12 hours, and it was dark when he woke. Casey wasn't beside him anymore, and his hands scrabbled frantically through the sheets, as if he might have missed Casey when he first flung his arm out.

He was in the living area, drinking juice out of a box from a straw and watching MTV with the teenaged boy. "Zeke, Zeke," Casey whispered, and it was the frightened voice of the child Casey.

"Hey, buddy," Zeke said, and went to rub his head in reassurance. Delilah was at the kitchen table, watching them with sharp eyes. 

"Zeke, I think they're here," Casey whispered, letting his box fall and clinging to Zeke's waist. 

"Naw, buddy, it's just Delilah," Zeke answered. "Though that's not much better." Casey didn't answer, but let go after a moment. The kid had picked up his juice box and Casey accepted it again.

"He doesn't remember right now what happened," the kid told Zeke. "But he knows it was bad."

"Bad shit, huh, Casey," Zeke whispered, and rubbed his head again. "Whaddya say, buddy? Ready to get out of here?" He looked over at Delilah.

"Did you even think about it?" she asked, her voice scornful and accusing. "Do you think this was easy for me, Zeke? Do you think this is the type of thing we do for people every day?"

"I don't know," Zeke said. "I don't know about any of it."

"For God's sake, Zeke, make a decision," Delilah spat. "Do something."

He considered her, and then tugged at Casey. "Let's go, Casey," he said, and Casey scrambled up eagerly. "I'm doing something," he told Delilah as he snatched the keys off the table. 

They were almost to the car when he heard her running after them. "Zeke, please," she called. "I won't be able to help you again. You're just going to . . . You've just got to put some faith in something, Zeke, you've got to take a chance on trusting someone, or this won't ever end."

Zeke stopped and clutched the keys in his hand until he could feel their jagged metal edges stabbing into his palm. In his other hand, Casey's hand was small and warm and familiar. Zeke turned and opened his mouth to speak, but even as he looked at her, Delilah changed, and for a flash, he saw another Delilah, a ghost Delilah, in his parents' garage. "There's nowhere to go. There's nowhere to hide," she hissed as her face crawled. "We're everywhere," and then it was just Delilah again, frustrated and pissed off and pleading.

"I'm sorry, Delilah," he said, and his voice shook. "I really am," and they left.


	12. Trekkie, Sci-Fi Freak

Chicago, Illinois  
January-April 2004

"The important thing to remember is that truth can be stranger than fiction," the lecturer said, and Stokely's ears perked up. "When we hear a bizarre story from a patient, the question is not, _Why is this patient delusional?_ , but _Is this patient delusional?_ In other words, does the patient believe the impossible because he is disturbed, or is the patient disturbed because he has seen the impossible?"

Across the top of her notebook, Stokely wrote down a name: Dr. Marc Stanley.

_____

It had been so long since they had heard from Zeke and Casey that Stokely was beginning to wonder if they were dead, or worse. She began to fear that this would be how it ended, in nothingness, in years upon years of not knowing, of wondering, of never ceasing to wait.

At Christmas, she and Stan ran to the store for Mrs. Rosado (Stokely had never learned to think of herself as Mrs. Rosado, though she knew she was; that name meant Stan's mother only to her) and saw Casey Connor's mother in the produce section. They both stopped to stare at her, but her eyes slid past them without recognition. 

Stokely remembered her as a well-kept woman, aging but determined to do it well. Now, her hair was gray, and deep lines were carved into her face around her mouth. She had aged a lifetime in the few years since Stokely had last seen her, and Stokely suddenly realized that for her, it had already ended in nothingness.

Stokely wondered what she would grow to look like over the years, if Mrs. Connor's bleak face would one day stare out at her from the mirror.

_____

Dr. Marc Stanley specialized in treating adolescents who had survived extreme traumas: airplane crashes, school shootings, witnessing the murder of their families. And, Stokely discovered, some who claimed to have been abducted by aliens.

"Adolescents, in particular, are unlikely to be believed when relating a fantastic story," Dr. Stanley wrote in one paper. "They are too often considered prone to tale-spinning, to wild imaginings, in order to secure the attention and recognition they crave. But just as the high emotions of an adolescent may indeed make them more susceptible to delusions and lies, it also makes the emotional toll of not being believed that much greater. It is our job to discern the lie from the truth, the delusion from the remarkable."

In addition to lecturing at universities, Stokely discovered that Dr. Stanley had a private practice in Evanston.

_____

He was happy to give her an interview for her thesis paper, and talked freely about the various aspects of his work, including that with alien abductees. He admitted that many of his patients were, indeed, making everything up, or were delusional. But there were others, he said, who he firmly believed were neither lying or mentally ill. 

Had they really been abducted, then? Dr. Stanley shrugged noncommittally.

"I believe that they are telling the truth, so far as they understand it," he said with the careful diplomacy of a man who valued his professional standing. "I also believe they are not delusional. I treat them through the validation of their story. What is the truth of the matter? That is simply not my question to answer."

"Isn't that ducking the question?" Stokely asked, and he had shrugged again, unconcerned. 

"We can't have all the answers," he said. "What would be left for the next generations to figure out?"

After Stokely shook his hand and thanked him, gathered her things and started for the door, Dr. Stanley said very quietly, "Ms. Rosado, did you want to tell me your story?"

No one had asked Stokely to tell her story since the police had released her into her parents' custody more than five years before. She wasn't certain if she was more relieved or afraid, but it didn't matter once she started to speak, because there was no turning it off, not until she'd come to the end, to the nothingness she was now mired in. She judiciously edited anything involving Zeke and Casey; both she and Stan had told the FBI in numerous interviews that they had never heard from them after the Great Herrington Escape. 

Dr. Stanley's face did not change throughout her telling, except to become rather thoughtful.

"That's a different type of tale," he said mildly at the end of it. 

"Yeah," Stokely breathed as she tried to control her shaking hands. 

Dr. Stanley regarded her with contemplative eyes, and then asked, "Are you free on Saturday? I'd like to introduce you to someone."

"I'm free," Stokely answered without thinking about it. On the train home, she began to think better of it, of everything, but she'd already said yes, not to mention spilling her guts all over his office floor, so she might as well see it through.

_____

The Center for UFO Studies was located right there in Chicago, and Stokely had never known it. Dr. Stanley walked in with the confidence of someone who had been there many times before.

Even on Saturday, there were people tapping away at computers and huddled around monitors in consultation. Dr. Stanley strolled past them and went to the filing room, where a young man, about Stokely's age, was sorting through stacks of folders on a conference table.

"Kevin," Dr. Stanley greeted him warmly, and the young man smiled in welcome, griping Dr. Stanley's hand in a firm handshake. 

"Doc!" he said. "Long time. What's up?"

"I want you to meet Stokely Rosado," Dr. Stanley said, and Stokely stepped forward.

"Hi," the young man said, taking her proffered hand. "Kevin Morris. They took my sister in 1993."

"Nice to meet you," Stokely said automatically, and then forced the words out. "They took over my high school in 1998."

Kevin didn't bat an eye. "Let me show you around," he said.

_____

She told Stan she was working on her thesis whenever she went to the Center, which had the virtue of being a half-truth. She ignored the uneasy stirring in her stomach at the near-lie.

_____

In March, Dr. Stanley sat down across the table from her in the Center's small library, and glanced over the stack of his own articles that was piled in front of Stokely. He fingered them thoughtfully, then asked quietly, "Stokely, are you ever going to tell me about Zeke and Casey?"

It didn't surprise Stokely that he knew there was something to tell about Zeke and Casey, though she was careful never to mention them around Center people. "I don't know," she said honestly, because she still had not decided where to place her faith.

"I might be able to help," Dr. Stanley said, eyes skimming over the pages. 

"They're gone," Stokely said abruptly. "I mean, really gone. I haven't heard from them -- it's almost a year. Last June. I'm, I'm -- I think they might be really gone, dead or . . ."

"They're not taken," Dr. Stanley murmured. "And I don't think they're dead, though we might be wrong."

"We?" Stokely asked. "We who?"

Dr. Stanley's eyes flickered up from the pages in front of him, and glanced at the door over Stokely's shoulder, so she turned and looked. 

Delilah Profitt was standing in the doorway. "Hi, Stokely," she said.

Stokely was so stunned that she forgot to be angry. By the time Delilah was finished telling her story, Stokely's world was shifting and remolding itself too swiftly for her to remember all the reasons she despised Delilah. 

They didn't matter, anyway, Stokely would realize later, after her mind had begun to digest the new information, the new possibilities. 

There was work to be done.


	13. Really You

Chicago, Illinois, to Portland, Oregon  
April 2004

"Hello?" Stokely mumbled into the phone, not fully awake.

"I need your help," Zeke said, and then she was wide awake.

"Yes," she said, and sat up. Beside her, Stan opened his eyes blearily, his forehead wrinkling in concern.

"I need to know about side-effects to Ativan," he said. "He's got this rash, it's awful, just everywhere, and he scratches all the time anyway. I thought maybe the Ativan, but I've been giving him Tempazepam to sleep at night, so it could be that, too, or maybe the combination, I don't know, but he's got to have something, he's climbing the damn walls lately, and I just -- I need some help here."

"OK," Stokely soothed. "I'll find out, and I'll find some alternatives for you. What's -- you've been -- it's been a long time."

"Yeah," Zeke said shortly. "It's been -- I don't think things have been very safe."

"Can I talk to him?" Stokely asked, and Zeke let out a chuff of breath. 

"He's asleep," he said, and now he sounded calmer. "He's been having a bad time."

"But you're both all right?" Stokely pressed, and Stan sat up beside her and pressed close. She tipped the receiver so he could listen. 

"Yeah," Zeke said. "We're both -- we're here."

"I'll need to check this stuff out for you," Stokely said. "Is there a number there?"

Zeke was silent for several moments, until finally Stokely said, "I can't do anything for you if I don't know how to reach you, Zeke."

"I know," he said, and gave her the number before hanging up.

Stokely sat and stared at the phone until Stan took it from her and hung it back up.

"I really thought they were dead," she said, and realized that it was true.

"So did I," Stan said, and then wrapped his arms around her. Stokely burrowed into his warmth, into his safe, loving embrace, and pretended she couldn't see the end of the ride, just before them now.

_____

Dr. Stanley told her it was taken care of, and gave her a number to call if she persuaded Zeke and Casey. Furthermore, he was offering to work with Casey personally.

"If ever there was a kid who got screwed by telling the truth, this is him," he said. "It seems like it's time someone gave him a break."

"What about Zeke?" she asked, and Dr. Stanley looked at her in surprise. 

"What about him?" he asked.

"What will he have to do, to make this happen?" she asked, clutching the phone number in her sweaty fingers.

Dr. Stanley leaned back in his chair and spread his hands out, palms out. "Nothing," he said quietly. "Free pass. He can't be taken away from Casey, anyway, not from what you've told me about them. I'd hope that later, he'll decide on his own that he wants to work with us, but we don't make people sign on. That goes for you, too. Don't do this because you feel you have to."

"I do have to," Stokely said, "but not because you want me to. I can't not do anything, now that I know. And I can't ask Zeke to put his trust in you if I'm not willing to do the same."

Dr. Stanley nodded in understanding, and offered her his hand as he stood up. 

"Good luck," he said.

_____

In the end, the ride didn't slam against the wall the way Stokely thought it would. Instead, it careened along the track, out of her control, and she held on and closed her eyes as her body threatened to become airborne. When she realized she hadn't crashed after all and opened her eyes, she found that Stan wasn't riding beside her anymore.

_____

"Stay, stay, please, don't do this," he begged, and they were both crying. "I love you, more than anything. Please, stay."

"I can't," she said. "Come with me. Please, Stan, please, come with me. Love me this much. Come with me."

Stan sank to the ground on his knees and clutched at her waist, burying his face in her lap. "Stokely," he wept, and she stroked his hair.

"Love me enough to face this," she whispered. "It happened, Stan. It's real. It's still happening. Come with me."

"I can't," he said in agony, and she knew it was the truth. He couldn't face it; he'd never been able to. She'd always known this.

"I love you, Stan," she said tenderly, and bent to kiss the top of his bowed head. "I'll always love you."

_____

"I need to see you," she said to Zeke on the phone.

"No," he said instantly.

"I've left Stan," she said, and Zeke made a small noise of surprise. "I need to talk to both of you. In person."

Zeke was silent, and she could almost hear him thinking. Finally, he said, "Portland. Call when you get here," and hung up.

_____

"You think this is the first time I've had this offer?" Zeke said when she was done.

"I know it's not," Stokely answered, "but it's the first time you've had it from me."

Zeke shook his head, and stood up to pace nervously. He stopped to light a cigarette, and then stared her down through the smoke. 

"How do you know you really know these people?" he asked.

"How do I know you're really you?" she demanded. "There's no test we can take, Zeke. There's no homemade drug we can shove up our noses to prove we won't screw each other over. You can't make that risk go away."

Zeke drew on the cigarette, and then crushed it out in the ashtray. "We're not taking that risk just for ourselves," he said. "We're taking it for him," and he gestured to Casey, asleep in the motel room bed. "He's the one we'll screw over if we're wrong."

Stokely looked across the room at Casey, a lump under the blankets, tufts of dark hair sticking out. We have to fight, she heard him saying, back in Zeke's garage.

"Casey has never been afraid to fight," she said softly. "Even when it was dangerous. He's never been afraid of the harder road."

Zeke looked bitterly exhausted at that point, and sat down heavily in his chair. "I know," he said dully.

"You can't keep him safe forever," Stokely said. "And you can't make him better. Love and sheer will can't cure him, Zeke. He deserves this chance."

Zeke nodded his head, jerkily, and leaned over, forearms on his knees, silently studying his hands. Finally, he looked up at her.

"What if I make the wrong choice?" he asked, and she could hear the desperation in his voice, could see the fear in his face. 

Stokely gently took his hands in hers. "What if you don't?" she asked.


	14. Getting Kind of Used to It

Montana  
July 2004

Casey was on the porch, smoking and looking at the mountains. Zeke padded out barefoot, squinting in the dim moonlight.

"Can't sleep?" he asked.

"Hey," Casey said softly, not turning around. "I was just," he made a vague gesture with his hand, "thinking. About things."

"Yeah?" Zeke asked, and sat down beside him on the step. The pack was lying there, and Zeke nabbed a cigarette out of it. Casey produced a lighter and cupped his hand around the flame for Zeke.

"These are mine," Zeke said after dragging on the cigarette. 

"I'm out," Casey said, pocketing the lighter.

"You smoke too much," Zeke told him, and Casey grinned wryly.

"No caffeine, no alcohol, no sugar, no nothing that I might enjoy in the slightest," he said. "Allow me this one vice, Zeke, all right?"

It was on the tip of Zeke's tongue to say, "Dr. Stanley says --" but he stopped himself. He started too many sentences with that phrase.

Instead, he asked, "What were you thinking about?"

"Aliens and outcasts and conspiracies, oh my," Casey said lightly. "The usual fare." He exhaled, and Zeke could see the thin stream of smoke catching in the moonlight. "Actually, I heard Stokely come in and went to say hi, and then I couldn't get back to sleep."

"She's been gone awhile," Zeke said noncommittally.

"Yep," Casey concurred, and ground out his cigarette. "Lots of people gone a lot lately. Big stuffs going on."

Casey had his head turned away, and Zeke couldn't see his eyes. "You've got your own big stuffs going on," he said.

Casey snorted. "Yeah," he said sarcastically. "Pills and regimens and behavior modification and slaying all those inner demons. I'm a busy boy."

"It's hard work," Zeke said quietly, and finished his cigarette. 

"Yeah," Casey sighed tiredly. "That it is."

_____

The safehouse in Montana was really a working ranch, though Zeke had come to understand that only about half of the people living and coming and going through it actually had anything to do with the operation of the ranch. The proprietor was a lanky, yet-attractive woman in her 50s, big blonde hair and cowboy hat and all. Nancy ran both ranch and safehouse with a good-natured efficiency that could almost make Zeke forget that some of her outbuildings were armories in disguise.

Zeke and Casey weren't the only people there who seemed to be doing nothing more than lying low and trying to mend. There were other unexplained guests, and there was any number of people who came and went, showing up every few weeks only to disappear again a few days later.

On any given night, they might dine with FBI agents and Foreign Service officers, physicists and physicians, truck drivers and waitresses, priests and criminals. 

Here, Zeke was beginning to see the scope of the world, and realize that Herrington was the tiniest, most insignificant portion of it.

_____

Twice in the first few weeks, Zeke hauled Casey out the door, intending to leave.

The first time, Zeke sat in the car, sweaty hands clutching the steering wheel, and tried to think of just where he was going. In the passenger seat, Casey whimpered and shook with side-effect tremors.

Zeke was still sitting there 30 minutes later when Stokely rapped on the window. Once he'd rolled it down, she said, "It's going to take time, Zeke. You have to give this a chance. It took a lot of people a long time to screw him up this bad, and there's going to be some hit-and-miss in making him better."

Zeke had glared at her, but he'd gotten out of the car and taken Casey back inside.

The second time, Casey, already fighting anyone and everyone and screaming his indignation to the world, had twisted in Zeke's grasp and grabbed onto one of the porch banisters. He'd clung to it with such ferocity that Zeke had had to remove splinters from both of Casey's palms later.

"No!" Casey had shrieked, and then begun to sob. "No, Zeke, no. Please, I have to try. Please, I'll do better."

Zeke had let go instantly. "You don't have to do better, Casey," he'd answered, shaken to his core. "It's not you."

"Please," Casey had sobbed, huddled on the steps. "I want to try."

"All right, buddy," Zeke had murmured, and taken him back inside.

_____

“I’m trying,” Casey said now.

“I know,” Zeke said simply. 

“I want it all so bad,” Casey said softly. “I want it all back, Zeke.”

We can get them all back, Zeke’s mind echoed. But he didn’t know if that was true.

“Can’t go back, man,” he said, and Casey nodded.

“I don’t want to go back,” he said. “I just want . . . I just want myself back, you know?” He turned to look at Zeke, and in the moonlight, his eyes were huge and glinting. 

Zeke used his foot to nudge Casey’s calf. “This is you, Casey,” he said, and it was true. This person who was emerging was all the Caseys stirred together, his hurt and his anger and his innocence and his determination.

This was the Casey whom Zeke had always wanted to meet, all these long years.

Casey had looked away agin, out toward the Rockies, but he leaned sideways to bump his shoulder affectionately into Zeke’s chest. Zeke reciprocated with a knee to Casey’s hip.

“Ow,” Casey said. “Quit it, you fucker.”

Zeke grinned. “Stop stealing my cigarettes,” he said.

“Bite me,” Casey said cheerily, and hopped to his feet. “I’m going back to bed.” He extended his fist to Zeke, who tapped the knuckles of his own fist against it, then looked thoughtfully at Casey.

“Is this how you thought it would end?” he asked, and Casey cocked his head to look down at Zeke.

“I thought this was still the beginning,” he said, and went inside.


	15. Weigh It

Montana  
September 2004

Casey once told Zeke that in his imaginings and hallucinations and waking escapes, back in That Place, he had envisioned an ending where he walked off hand-in-hand with Delilah, while Zeke got to be the new star of the football team, and date Miss Burke.

“You made me a jock?” Zeke asked in great amusement. He let the bit about Miss Burke slide.

“Well, I couldn’t just let you go back to selling scat and porn out of the trunk of your car,” Casey answered, part in jest and part in defense. 

“Yeah, but couldn’t I have cashed in on my sudden fame and parlayed it into a career as an ill-behaved rock star?” Zeke shot back, grinning. 

“Zeke, you have no musical talent.” Casey sounded both exasperated and fond.

“Neither do rock stars,” Zeke said easily, and Casey laughed.

_____

“It’s going to start soon, isn’t it?” Casey asked Stokely one day. “The invasion or colonization or whatever we’re supposed to call it. It’s almost here, isn’t it?”

"No," Stokely said, startled. She leaned forward in her chair. "Casey, no. Don't you understand? It's already started, it's already happened, it's happening now. We aren't trying to stop them from taking over -- we're trying to take it back. We're trying to keep them from having everything."

"But, but, then was," Casey stumbled over the words, shock on his face. "Then was Herrington just the beginning?"

"Oh, Casey." Stokely's face seemed almost tender to Zeke. "Herrington was so far from the beginning. Herrington's nothing more than a footnote.”

 _Footnotes,_ Zeke thought. _That’s what we are. Scribbles in the margins._

And for the first time, he wanted something more than to be forgotten.

_____

At the end of August, Dr. Stanley went back to Illinois. The psychiatrist was always circumvent when talking to Zeke regarding Casey’s health, but Zeke took his departure to mean that despite the nail-chewing and insomnia, the bouts of depression, the occasional surges of anger, Casey was as well as he was going to be.

“There’s someone else here for me to see,” Casey said absently when Zeke asked about it. “And I can call Dr. Stanley.”

He didn’t seem inclined to say more, so Zeke didn’t ask more.

_____

It always came back to the three of them, Zeke realized, he and Casey and Stokely. Sometimes he thought they were stuck forever in that trashed locker room.

But he never could quite forget, no matter how hard he tried, that before that, before it was over, Stokely had turned on them.

It wasn’t her, he reminded himself. It was never her. But then, he’d stopped trusting even himself a long time ago.

_____

One of the envelopes said “Zeke” and the other said “Casey.” Flipping his open, Zeke found a new self, complete and ready made.

“You’re sending us away?” Casey asked, looking at the contents of his own envelope. His voice was raw and painful in Zeke’s ears.

“Your call,” Stokely said, quietly. It was early afternoon, and the local diner was empty save the three of them, but none of them really spoke freely anymore. “Stay or go. The keys are in the car; there’s cash in the envelopes. You can come back to the ranch, or you can . . . go.”

“Just like that?” Zeke said, and Stokely nodded.

“Just like that,” she said, and met his eyes. She looked down a moment later, suddenly awkward. “I’m leaving,” she said.

“Leaving?” Casey asked. “To go where?” and Stokely shook her head.

“I can’t,” she said, and Zeke could hear how difficult it was for her to get those words out. “If you come back, if you’re with us . . .” She trailed off.

Casey was clutching his envelope with white-knuckled fingers, but his eyes were fixed on Stokely’s face. “Stokes,” he said painfully, and she leaned over suddenly and grabbed him in a fierce embrace.

She let go just as abruptly a moment later, and lurched to her feet. For a second, Zeke thought she was going to say something more, but instead she just pressed her lips together, and left.

He wondered if she had been going to plead with them to stay, or to go. 

Casey’s eyes followed Stokely through the windows, down the street, until she turned the corner. When he looked back at Zeke, his eyes were huge and sad.

“What do you want to do, Zeke?” he asked.

Zeke shook his head. “Your call,” he said. “Just say the word.”

Casey looked out the window again, toward the corner Stokely had disappeared around. “No,” he said. “It’s not my call. You came to get me. You didn’t have to have this life. If you want to walk away, I’ll understand. I’ll come with you. I promised, Zeke.”

Zeke let out his breath in a short, harsh laugh. He looked at his envelope, and let his fingertips brush over it. He thought about years on the run, of dealing drugs and stealing and lying and fighting to keep them alive. He thought about Casey, rocking with his skinny arms around his legs and crying out for Zeke to help him. He thought about his hands around Casey's neck, how fragile the windpipe had been underneath them. 

He didn't want to go back to that place, either. 

"Zeke," Casey said, putting his hand on top of Zeke's, and Zeke made himself look up. Casey's eyes were clear and deep and unwavering. "Aliens are taking over the world. Weigh it." 

Zeke looked away, out the window at the people going about their ordinary lives, getting groceries and washing the car and picking up the kids and stopping at the post office. They scurried about, buried in their own anxieties and responsibilities, blithely unaware of what was going on all around them, in the margins of their lives. He thought about going to school, and getting a job, and starting a family. He thought about living an ordinary life, where he could sleep at night and didn't know the proper way to kill an alien. He thought about Herrington and its pleasant, tree-lined streets, and packed Friday-night football games, and all the good, ordinary people who populated it. 

Then he took a deep breath and turned his hand so he could curl his fingers around Casey's. He looked Casey in the eye when he spoke. 

"Let's get the fuck out of here," he said.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Birthright Podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/941197) by [Baylor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baylor/pseuds/Baylor)




End file.
